Sunday, May 27, 2007

A better conspiracy theory on Lebanon, conveyed by the Angry Arab. Better, but still not good. How would having the Lebanese army fire on innocent (and long-suffering) Palestinian refugees ‘diffuse Sunni-Shi`ite tensions in the region’? If the Saudis decided they no longer needed Sunni militias in Lebanon, why didn’t they just stop funding them? And why would they think killing civilians would weaken the militias, if that was indeed the goal? We seem to be in the middle of a world-wide war against Palestinians, in Gaza, in Iraq, and in Lebanon. Who could possibly be behind such a thing? Who could possibly benefit from a civil war in Lebanon?

The Guardian is caught channeling the ghost of the career of Judy Miller, using the Miller technique of quoting anonymous American military sources in such a way as to make wild allegations look like facts. Even worse, the channeling is silly on the face of it, consisting of some story that the Iranians are trying to knock some sense into the Bush Administration and force it out of Iraq. On the contrary, having the Americans bogged down in Iraq rushing around killing Sunnis is just what Iran would like to see go on forever.

I’ve said all along, and it remains true today, Iran is in no danger of an attack from the United States, but Syria is in grave danger.

Wars haven’t worked very well, so the U. S. and Israel are falling back on conducting war by other means. We’ve come full circle, with Hamas having been bolstered to counter Fatah, and now Fatah being armed to counter Hamas. Theroots of this go back to covert American support of the Muslim Brotherhood to counter Nasser, another bright idea that some might want to take back. If you accept the Official Story, the events of September 11 were the ultimate ‘blowback’ for this support.

There is a big problem with living in a country which lies and breaks international law, and continues to make unwarranted and outrageous threats. When one of your colleagues is arrested in Iran and accused of fomenting ‘regime change’, you have absolutely no credibility in complaining about it. No credibility whatsoever. When the leaders of your country keep talking about dropping nuclear weapons on Iran, who is to say any group of complaining American academics aren’t just working with the arrested woman as part of the larger plot of the American government? I’d take the word of Iranian authorities over the word of any American.